Top small firms offer trust, plus all the conveniences

The companies that top the latest list of "Best Small and Medium Companies to Work For" offer everything from on-site laundry, personal trainers, and three full meals a day -- and much of it for free.

For some perks you might have to pay, such as at-work haircuts and massages. Still, you can spruce yourself up, buy flowers, or maintain your car -- including oil change or a detailing -- all on company time.

"We really just try to give people a lot of latitude and try to create a comfortable family environment," said Frank Linsalata, chief operating officer at Analytical Graphics, the Exton, Penn.-based software company that topped the list of best small places to work, in part because the firm offers the perks detailed above.

"That's what has the staying power: To get people feeling comfortable so they can perform at their highest level and feel good about work," he said.

The list of 50 top small and medium companies to work for nationwide was compiled for the Society for Human Resource Management, a trade association, by the Great Place to Work Institute, a San Francisco-based research company that also produces Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For."

Both lists use the same methodology: Companies apply to be considered and then the institute surveys employees and company executives.

The employee survey accounts for two-thirds of the ranking, and executives' detailing of benefits makes up the other third.

More than 27,000 workers at 204 companies were surveyed for this second annual small and medium companies list. Small companies on the list employ 50 to 250 workers and medium companies have 251 to 999 people.

At the top-ranked mid-sized company, biotechnology firm Genencor International in Palo Alto, Calif., the company pays workers' public transportation costs and, for commuters who need to run errands during the day, provides company cars and bicycles for personal errands.

"Employees are spending more and more time at work doing personal stuff and more time at home doing work stuff," Sjoerdsma said. "If someone can get their oil changed at work vs. doing it on a Saturday, that created a solution" for both the company and workers, he said.

Workers at Triage Consulting, a health-care consulting firm in San Francisco and No. 2 on the small company list, spend many days on the road each year, so the firm pays for family members to fly to the employee's location for the weekend, said Vanna Shir, a director at the company.

The company also provides an on-site "mini-MBA" programs plus over 100 hours of professional development in workers' first few years on the job, she said.

Fun perks just an added bonus

While the on-site perks make for good reading, the underlying theme evident in the worker surveys is the degree of trust the firms demonstrate in their employees, said Katie Popp, team leader of the best companies project at the Great Place To Work Institute.

"It's less of 'this is a really cool perk' and more of a confirmation that there are high levels of trust in these organizations," she said.

Along with trust, there are financial benefits, too: 40% percent of these top-ranked small and mid-sized companies pay 100% of their employees' health-care insurance premiums, Popp said.

About 14% of the large companies that make it to the Fortune list pay 100% of health-care premiums, she said.

Worth the cost

While other firms might shudder at the thought of workers spending long hours in, say, the weight-training room, Linsalata says that's not an issue at Analytical Graphics, the software company that makes analytical tools for space and defense organizations.

"We treat people like the professionals they are," he said. "We would never say 'hey, half hour for lunch' or 'don't go work out during the middle of the day.' We have aggressive corporate goals and we've had tremendous growth, so people know what their goals are."

Analytical Graphics foots the bill for a wide array of perks, but the company says it's worth it. For one, treating workers right improves productivity, Linsalata said.

"On any given day, a knowledge worker can have performance from zero to 20x in magnitude, depending on the mindset" he said.

"If you're doing a job that requires a lot of thinking, your state of mind can vary your performance tremendously. We treat everyone like professionals and try to let people run with their skills as much as possible," Linsalata said.

A sign of the payoff: Low turnover rates. About 3% to 5% of the company's workers leave, in an industry that sees a turnover rate as high as 20%, Linsalata said.

"That turnover rate is a tremendous efficiency gain to the company," he said.

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